Blowback As Canada Muzzles Public Talk of Climate Change

Clouds over the Atlantic Ocean off the U.S. east coast (Photo: NASA / Wikimedia)

The public is up in arms after Canadian officials decided to prohibit government weather forecasters from publicly discussing climate change.

As of Wednesday, nearly 14,000 people had signed a petition penned by Canadian resident Janelle Martel that slams "another move on the government’s part to keep the public uninformed about climate change."

Environment Canada spokesperson Mark Johnson told De Souza that Environment Canada prohibits meteorologists from discussing climate change, citing the need for them to speak to their "area of expertise."

But the petition, created on the website of company Care2, charges, “These meteorologists undergo years of training to learn about severe weather changes. This, along with the fact that the government has barred other scientists from discussing climate change without political clearance, makes it seem as though the government [wants] to limit and control the information Canadians have access to regarding climate change.”

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